MILWAUKEE, Wis. – It may have the nation’s fourth-highest per-pupil spending, but according to a recent study by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), Wisconsin’s largest school district appears to be spending massive amounts of taxpayer money on hoarding vacant and underutilized real estate instead of educating children.

According to the WILL report, which was released last week, the Milwaukee Public Schools system currently has 27 schools operating at or below 60 percent of capacity – 13 of which are operating at less than half full. Not only does the district not utilize these 27 schools efficiently, but the report notes that 17 MPS schools currently sit completely vacant and have cost taxpayers over $1.6 million in utilities alone over the past three years. In total, WILL says 25 percent of MPS building capacity for educating students is either empty or underutilized.

According to the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, this year MPS is receiving $538 million of the state’s nearly $4.5 billion in general school aid, or more than 12 percent of the total state general school aid – despite MPS having only 9 percent of the state’s total students.

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The report comes on the heels of promises to renew efforts to reform how vacant and underutilized MPS schools are treated under state law. According to Rep. Joe Sanfelippo, this session’s bill will be similar to the bill that failed to pass the state senate last year.

Under the bill, the state would clearly define a vacant or underutilized school and require that those schools be sold, with other educational operators such as private or charter schools having the first opportunity to buy the underutilized of vacant schools.

The need for the bill arose because MPS has been going out of its way to sit on these schools rather than selling them to private or charter schools which they view as competition. In one case, a successful private school, St. Marcus Lutheran School, attempted to buy a vacant MPS building. Instead, the MPS board cut a last-minute development deal with a private developer that ended up falling through, leaving taxpayers on the hook for up to $1 million.

Sanfelippo told Media Trackers that the purpose of the reform bill is to ensure that school buildings go to educate children rather than sit empty. He noted that MPS is spending more money to keep these schools empty than many other school districts in the state spend on actually educating their students.

According to the WILL study, the underutilized schools also had a lower average state performance report card rating, higher truancy, and more than twice the number of police calls per students.

Authored by Nathan Schacht
Originally published here

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Published with permission